German compliment responses

Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 547–571 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

German compliment responses§ Andrea Golato* Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 3072 FLB, 707 S. Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Received 10 January 2001; received in revised form 7 June 2001

Abstract Using a conversation analytic (CA) methodology, this study focuses on the preference organization of compliment sequences in German. The paper compares German and American compliment responses given among families and friends. The data show that while rejections and turns containing certain agreement and disagreement features are constructed similarly in German and American English, it is in agreement sequences that the two languages differ. It is suggested that in such sequences, cross-cultural communication can become problematic. I will then present one such example in which a nonnative speaker of English transferred the format of a German compliment response into American English, resulting in communication problems. Finally, I will discuss the implications of these findings for cross-cultural communication, and suggest the incorporation of pragmatics into foreign and second language teaching. # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. Keywords: Compliment responses; Conversation analysis; German; Preference; Intercultural communication

1. Introduction Compliments have been said to ‘‘grease the social wheels’’ and thus to serve as ‘‘social lubricants’’ (Wolfson, 1983: 89). We all have given compliments and we all receive them occasionally, which may account for why they have received so much attention from a wide range of researchers working in different fields and with very

§ Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the AAAL convention in Vancouver, British Columbia in March 2000, and in the SLATE speaker series at the University of Illinois in April 2000. * E-mail: [email protected].

0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. PII: S0378-2166(01)00040-6

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different languages.1 The literature on compliments in German, however, is rather scarce. While Auer and Uhmann (1982) studied the sequential organization of assessments in German, they excluded compliments (p. 2). In an article on pragmatic differences between institutional talk in Germany and the United States, Kotthoff (1989: 451– 452) addresses complimenting behavior in the two countries. Her anecdotal remarks summarize the observations of many exchange students coming from Germany to the U.S., who claim to be surprised (and sometimes puzzled) by the strength and number of compliments Americans readily give in various situations, even to strangers in public settings (such as in service encounters, at the supermarket, etc.). Similarly, most German exchange students and German native speakers in Germany I have talked to informally claim to be embarrassed to receive compliments, and they insist that they reject them. Yet, as will be shown in a later section of this paper, what people claim they do and what they are actually doing can be two entirely different things. The present study investigates compliment responses as they actually occur in non-elicited ordinary conversation among German native speakers in Germany. The study itself is patterned after Pomerantz’s (1978) analysis of compliment responses in American English and addresses similarities and differences in the complimenting behavior of the two different speaker groups. Additionally, some implications for cross-cultural conversations will be raised.

2. Methodology When reviewing the body of literature on compliments, it becomes immediately obvious that they have been studied within various methodological frameworks, using different tools and methods of data collection including: (a) discourse completion tasks and questionnaires (e.g. Barnlund and Akari, 1985; Yuan, 1996), (b) recall protocols (e.g. Knapp et al., 1984), (c) role play (e.g. Saito and Beecken, 1997), (d) field observation (e.g. Wolfson and Manes, 1980; Herbert and Straight, 1989, and many others) and (e) conversation and discourse analysis (Pomerantz, 1978; Wieland, 1995). Golato (in preparation) discussed in detail the advantages and disadvantages of each of these methods of data collection, noting that each of them allows the researcher to investigate different facets of the topic at hand (e.g. intuitions, frequency, distribution, sequential organization, etc.). She further argued that conversation analysis (CA) is 1 Compliments and responses to compliments have been studied for American English (Pomerantz, 1978; Wolfson and Manes, 1980; Wolfson, 1981b, 1983; Knapp et al., 1984; Herbert, 1986, 1989, 1990; Holmes, 1986, 1988; Herbert and Straight, 1989) for English of African Americans (Henderson, 1996), for British English (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 1989; Yla¨nne-McEwen, 1993), for South African English (Herbert, 1989, 1990; Herbert and Straight, 1989; Chick, 1996) for Australian English (Cordella et al., 1995), for New Zealand English (Holmes, 1986, 1988; Holmes and Brown, 1987), for Arabic (Nelson et al., 1993, 1996), for Chinese (Yang, 1987; Chen, 1993; Liu, 1995; Yuan, 1996; Fong, 1998), for Finnish (Yla¨nne-McEwen, 1993), for French (Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1987; Wieland, 1995); for Japanese (Barnlund and Akari, 1985; Saito and Beecken, 1997), for Korean (Han, 1992), for Polish (LewandowskaTomaszczyk, 1989; Herbert, 1991; Jaworski, 1995), for Brazilian Portuguese (Brezolin, 1995; Barbosa, 1996), for Spanish (Valde´s and Pino, 1981; Moore, 1996) and finally a variety of other languages are addressed in Manes (1983) and in Wolfson (1981a).

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well suited for the close study of culturally determined speech events since it makes use of video- and/or audiotaped samples of non-elicited face-to-face or telephone conversations, thus allowing for the repeated and detailed analysis of a phenomenon in its sequential context. As a result, both interactional features and nonverbal elements can be included in the analysis. Since the data are always spontaneous, they represent what speakers are actually doing in conversation. Crucially, they do not represent speakers’ intuitions, which are not always reliable in such contexts (Golato, in preparation). For these reasons, conversation analysis was chosen as the methodology for analyzing the German data for the present study. The data were taken from a corpus of 25 hours of non-elicited videotaped dinner-table conversations and 6 hours of audiotaped telephone conversations between close friends and family members. Participants were only video-taped during activities that they would normally engage in with each other. Such activities included dinners, barbecues, get-togethers over drinks or coffee and cake, and card games. All speakers were from the middle or upper middle class, held or were pursuing a university degree (equivalent of the B.A. or M.A.) or held white-collar positions in Germany (e.g. social workers, sales representatives, managers, accountants, teachers, physical therapists, etc.); two of the 27 participants were housewives at the time of recording. The speakers ranged in age from 23–70 years, with the majority being in their late twenties or early thirties. They all spoke standard German (some speakers had a pronounced regional accent) and came from various regions in Germany (northern Germany, eastern Germany (Dresden, Berlin, Brandenburg), central Germany, and southern Germany (both Bavaria and Baden-Wu¨rttemberg). All in all, the 27 speakers produced 50 compliment sequences. Data were transcribed using the transcription notation developed by Jefferson (1983, 1985). [See also Sacks et al. (1974: Appendix) for an early description of the transcription notation and Atkinson and Heritage (1984: ix–xvi) for a more detailed version.] In general, transcription notations in conversation analytic research capture characteristics of speech delivery, overlaps, and pauses. Since this transcription system uses capital letters to express loudness, the author refrained from capitalizing German nouns. Whenever German data is displayed, the transcript provides the original talk on the top line, the second line is an interlinear translation, and an English idiomatic translation is provided at the bottom. For easier reading, the English version is given in italics. When data samples do not stem from the author’s own corpus, the transcription notation of the original is used. In the following paragraphs, I will first discuss American compliment responses before turning to German compliment responses. I will then compare compliment responses in the two languages before discussing a compliment exchange across the two languages.

3. Compliment responses in American English Pomerantz (1978) pointed out that recipients of compliments are under the influence of two conflicting constraints which are ‘‘concurrently relevant but not concurrently satisfiable’’ (p. 81). The first constraint stems from the fact that compliments can be

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seen as assessments in that the speaker is (positively) evaluating some state of affairs, some object, or some action. The preferred next action to an assessment is an agreement with the assessment, which is usually performed as a second assessment (Pomerantz, 1984: 62). Pomerantz (1978: 82) further observes that compliments also have the function of ‘‘supportive’’ actions which makes them similar to offers, invitation, gifts, praises etc. As such, they have an acceptance of the compliment as their preferred next action. At the same time, however, there is a second constraint on the speakers which conflicts with the first constraint: they should not praise themselves. As can be seen in the following segment, adapted from Pomerantz (1978: 89), self-praise routinely gets sanctioned by coparticipants: 1) (HS:S)

=>

A:

Just think of how many people would miss you. You would know who cared.

B:

Sure. I have a lot of friends who would come to the funeral and say what an intelligent, bright, witty, interesting person I was.

A:

They wouldn’t say that you were humble

B:

No. Humble, I’m not.

When B engages in self praising behavior, A criticizes this behavior by teasing B. Teasing, cracking jokes, or otherwise critically assessing a speaker’s self-praise are routine sanctions leveled against speakers who do not enforce self-praise avoidance. If speakers wish to praise themselves without being sanctioned, they often include a disclaimer in their talk such as ‘I don’t like to brag’ (Pomerantz, 1978: 89–90). This dilemma of on the one hand having to accept a compliment or agree with it, yet at the same time having to avoid self-praise, is a tricky business, and researchers (Valde´s and Pino, 1981: 55; Knapp et al., 1984: 12–13; Herbert, 1986: 77, 1990: 207) have noted that various ‘‘manners books’’ include a section on how to accept compliments gracefully. Table 1 presents a summary of the patterns of compliment responses that are available to a speaker of American English as described by Pomerantz (1978) and refined by Herbert and Straight (1989). A similar table can be found in Valde´s and Pino (1981: 56). In Table 1, the response type is given in the left column while an example is given in the right column. All examples are numbered on the right hand side in parentheses. Although the most frequent response to a compliment in American English is not an acceptance, acceptances of compliments are frequently realized as appreciations. As in the following data sample, one often finds appreciation tokens (e.g., ‘‘thank you’’) in the compliment return: (2)

A: B:

That’s beautiful. It really is Thank you

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Table 1 Compliment responses in American English Response type I. Acceptances: 1. Appreciation token A compliments B B accepts compliment 2. Agreements/second assessment A compliments B B agrees with compliment assertion II. Rejections: 1. Disagreements A compliments B B disagrees with compl. assertion

Example

A: That’s beautiful. It really is B: Thank you

A: The organ music came out so beautifully in it B: I thought it did too,

(3)

H: Gee, hon, you look nice in that (4) dress W: Do you really think so? It’s just a rag that my sister gave me.

III. Solution types for 2 conflicting preferences 1. Questions – neutral stance A compliments B A: Those tacos were good! B questions compliment assertion B: You liked them. . . A confirms question/compliment A: I loved’em yes. 2. Evaluation shift (downgrade) A compliments B B scales down compliment assertion

(2)

(5)

A: Oh it was just beautiful B: Well thank you . . . uh I thought it was quite nice

(6)

A: Good shot. B: not very solid, though

(7)

A: You’re a good rower, Honey B: These are very easy to row. Very light.

(8)

5. Referent shift (compl. return) A compliments B B compliments A

A: Ya sound (justiz) real nice B: Yeah you soun’ real good too

(9)

6. Comment history A compliments B B comments on item/gives history

A: I love that suit. B: I got it at Boscov’s.

7. Reinterpretation A compliments B B reinterprets compliment

A: I like those pants B: You can borrow them anytime.

(11)

8. Ignoring A compliments B B ignores compliment

A: You’re the nicest person. B: Have you finished your essay yet?

(12)

3. Evaluation shift (qualification) A compliments B B qualifies compliment assertion 4. Referent shift (away from self) A compliments B B compliments other-than-self

(10)

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These appreciation tokens can stand alone or can be uttered in conjunction with a second assessment that is in agreement with the first assessment. Acceptances can also be uttered in the form of agreements, as in the following example: (3)2 A: B:

The organ music came out so beautifully in it I thought it did too,

Let us now turn from compliment acceptances to compliment rejections. When other supportive actions such as offers are rejected, speakers frequently use negated appreciations (such as ‘‘no thank you’’) (Pomerantz, 1978: 86). This is not the case when compliments are rejected. Compliments are rejected by disagreeing with the compliment assertion. This can be seen in data sample (4): (4)3 A: B:

Gee, Hon, you look nice in that dress Do you really think so? It’s just a rag that my sister gave me.

In responding to her husband’s compliment, the wife first questions her husband’s assertion and then gives a second assessment that is somewhat in disagreement with her husband’s, indicated by the negative evaluative expression ‘‘just a rag’’. Note too that her question is not an ordinary information seeking question, but is instead a ‘‘reversepolarity question (RPQ)’’ (Koshik, 1999: 97, and forthcoming). RPQs are affirmative yes/no questions which ‘‘reverse their polarity from affirmative to negative by conveying an implied negative assertion’’ (Koshik, 1999: 97). In data sample 4, it is the lexical item really that influences the positive question to be heard as expressing a negative orientation or a negative assertion (Quirk, Greenbaum et al., 1985: 808; Sacks, 1987: 57; Koshik, 1999: 188). In other words, in their design, RPQs display the epistemic stance (Koshik, forthcoming) of the speaker towards their utterances. In the data sample above, speaker B thus indicates with her question design that she herself does not believe that she looks nice in the dress. Hence, the question design is indicative of her disagreement with her husband. This disagreement is then further expressed or explained in her second turn constructional unit where she explains that the dress is just an old rag from her sister. As mentioned earlier, agreements and acceptances are preferred next actions. Consequently, one would expect the data to contain more acceptances/agreements than rejections/disagreements. In Pomerantz’s data, however, this was not the case.4 2

From earlier parts of the transcript (not displayed) it is clear that B was the one playing the organ music. Pomerantz categorized this data sample as a rejection although one might want to categorize it rather as questioning the compliment assertion rather than denying it. 4 Holmes (1986), and Herbert (1990) who also investigated American English, found more acceptances/agreements than rejections/disagreements in their corpora. I believe the reason for this difference in the results to be twofold. First, these researchers categorized agreements differently than Pomerantz did. For example, Holmes (1986: 492) counted appreciation tokens, agreement tokens, an agreeing utterance, a downgrade or qualification, and a compliment return (but interestingly enough not any other referent shift) as agreements, while Pomerantz views the latter two as ‘‘inbetween categories’’ (see Table 1); second, as noted above, neither Holmes and Herbert used tape-recorded conversation as a basis for their analysis but relied instead on field notes of observers. As argued above, this method of data collections has obvious shortcomings and ramifications in data categorization and interpretation. 3

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This is due to the second constraint placed on the recipient of a compliment, namely that of avoiding self praise. There are several ways of dealing with the two concurrently-placed but not concurrently satisfiable constraints placed on a speaker. Pomerantz pointed out that speakers routinely produce compliment responses that are somewhat ‘‘inbetween’’ acceptances and rejections. That is, they contain some features of acceptances/appreciations but also features of rejections/disagreements, or are neutral in stance. One such solution type is that of questioning the compliment assertion. In the absence of lexical items such as really or seriously which would turn the question into an RPQ, and in the absence of specific intonation contours or stress on certain words that would also turn the question into an RPQ, the questions in this category display a neutral stand on the part of the compliment receiver. The coparticipant can often be seen to give another compliment, reassuring the compliment receiver: (5)

A: B: A:

Those tacos were good! You liked them. . . I loved’em yes.

Another solution type is that of an evaluation shift: The recipient is giving a second assessment, still praising the same referent yet including evaluative descriptors that are somewhat less positive. Such a scaled-down assessment can be seen in datasample (6): (6)

A: B:

Oh it was just beautiful. Well, thank you uh I thought it was quite nice

There is still an appreciation token present in B’s response, yet the profferred assessment is scaled down, in slight disagreement with A’s turn. Thus, B’s turn exhibits features of compliment acceptances/agreements and disagreements and therefore of self-praise avoidance. Downgrades are very frequent when the referent of the compliment is not the coparticipant itself, but some object that belongs to the coparticipant, something the coparticipant made, etc. Another solution type is that of an evaluation shift in form of a qualification as in data-sample 7: (7)

A: B:

Good shot. not very solid, though

B’s utterance is a diminution of the praise A gave, not a contrastive opposite. Yet such responses get routinely treated as disagreements since the praise profferer may select to challenge or disagree with the diminution. Instead of an evaluation shift, a compliment recipient may also utter a referent shift, that is, a speaker may deflect the compliment away from himself/herself. The speaker can either deflect the compliment to an object:

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A: B:

You’re a good rower, Honey. These are very easy to row. Very light.

or to a third party, that is, credit can also be given to someone else, even to the person who has paid the compliment. In other words, a speaker can return the compliment: (9)

C: D:

Ya sound (justiz) real nice Yeah you soun’ real good too

Herbert and Straight (1989: 39) observed compliment recipients giving a nonevaluative comment on the item/trait that was complimented. This can be seen in the following example: (10) A: B:

I love that suit. I got it at Boscov’s.

Herbert (1986: 78; 1989: 16–17) noted three additional solution types for American English, the first of which is that of reinterpreting the compliment. Usually compliments are reinterpreted as requests, with the next relevant action becoming an offer as is displayed in the next example: (11) A: B:

I like those pants You can borrow them any time.

Occasionally, a compliment recipient ignores the compliment entirely (also from Herbert, 1989);5 (12) A: B:

You’re the nicest person. Have you finished your essay yet?

The preceding paragraphs have shown two different basic turn designs for accepting a compliment, and one design for rejecting a compliment. However, there is a far greater number of responses that display an ‘‘inbetween’’ character. Put differently, the data have shown that speakers of American English display an orientation to the two conflicting constraints (agreement and avoidance of self-praise) placed upon them when they are given a compliment.

4. Compliment responses in German Table 2 provides a summary of German compliment responses. Again, the response type is given in the left column while an example is given in the right column. All 5

Unfortunately, Herbert does not provide any context of the compliment nor was any nonvocal behavior of the speakers described.

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A. Golato / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 547–571 Table 2 Compliment responses in German Response type I. Acceptances: 1. Agreements/assessment of compl. A compliments B

B positively assesses compliment

2. Agreements/confirmation A compliments B

B confirms compliment assertion

3. Assessment + agreement-pursuit A compliments B

B uses same strength adj. + tag

A compliments again B accepts compliment II. Rejections: 1. Disagreements A compliments B

B disagrees with compl. assertion

Example

A: aber heute abend hier war’s scho¨n bei but it was nice this evening here at Euch your place B: scho¨n. That’s nice. A: ich sach ihr habt ja so en scho¨nes I said you have such a nice zwiebelmuster hier, onion pattern here, B: joa: ye:s

(14)

A: u¨brigens (.) das fleisch exzel [lent by the way (.) the meat excel [lent [ B: [super ne? [super right? A: exzellent excellent B: joa. yeah.

(16)

A: robert hat es .hhh ((sniff))eh- ich hm robert is .hhh ((sniff)) eh- I hm w- wie sagt man das beste g’mu¨t und h- how do you say the most even-tempered du hoast es beste feingefu¨hl and you are the most sensitive B: ach nee: komm, oh no: come on,

III. Solution types for 2 conflicting constraints 1. Questions – neutral stance A compliments B A: M::m lecker, M::m tasty, B questions compliment assertion B: ja:a? Yeah? A confirms question/compliment A: uh uhm uh uhm 2. Evaluation shift (downgrade) A compliments B

(13)

(17)

(18) ((high pitch)) ((high pitch))

A: ahh da sin so viele scho¨ne ecken bei ahh there are so many nice places where Euch. (continued on next page)

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Table 2 (continued) Response type

B scales down compliment assertion

3. Evaluation shift (qualification) A compliments B

B qualifies compliment assertion

4. Referent shift (away from self) A compliments B B compliments other-than-self

5. Referent shift (compl. return) A compliments B

B compliments A

6. Comment history A compliments B B comments on item/gives history

7. Reinterpretation A compliments B B reinterprets compliment

Example you live. B: jo jo sin scho¨ne ecken yea yea nice places

(19)

A: du bis en juter zahnarz [det hat immer you are a good dentist [it was always B: [ja ja ( ) [yeah yeah ( ) A: spass gemacht sich ] von dir fun when ] you B: ((non-committal)) ] A: behandeln zu lassen treated me B: ja:: is aber noch en weiter weg ye::s but there’s still a long way to go

A: lecker ((talking about barbecued meat)) yummy B: das fleisch hat sie gekauft ich hab’s she bought the meat i nur gegrillt only barbecued it A: schmeckt lecker ((talking about cake)) tastes yummy (1.5) B: der is aus dem kochbuch was du mir mal it is from the cookbook that you me once zu weihnachtn geschenkt has gave me for Christmas

A: das klingt gut du. is ja dann lecker hey that sounds good. is really tasty B: ja:a. und dann a¨hm hab ich so:: .hh a¨hm ye:ah. and then uhm I like .hh uhm diesmal mal so mirakel wip und this time I mixed like miracle whip and majonese gemischt,. . . mayonnaise . . .

A: lecker yummy B: da is noch mehr=du kanns gerne noch en there is more=you are welcome to stu¨ck essen eat another piece

(20)

(21)

(22)

(23)

(24)

(continued on next page)

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Table 2 (continued) Response type

Example

8. Ignoring A compliments B

A: Sieht aber lecker aus Looks real yummy (30.0 +)

B ignores compliment

(25)

examples are numbered on the right hand side in parentheses; the numbers correspond to those given to each example in the preceding paragraphs. In contrast to the beliefs of exchange students, the analysis of the data shows that German native speakers do accept compliments. They actually overwhelmingly accept compliments. However, the second pair part (i.e. their compliment response) differs considerably from responses displayed by native speakers of American English. One noticeable difference is that, in my data, none of the speakers ever accept a compliment by using an appreciation marker. In other words, there are no ‘‘thank yous’’ in the data. One German way of expressing an appreciation of a compliment is by providing an assessment. That is, they give an assessment of the compliment (not of the complement assertion!). This can be seen in the following data sample: (13)

A:

Aber heute abend hier war’s scho¨n bei euch But today evening here was it nice at yours but it was nice this evening here at your place

B:

scho¨n.6 nice. that’s nice.

In my data, the most frequent response was an agreement with a compliment assertion in the form of a confirmation of the compliment assertion with the particle ja (yes) or some variant thereof. In the following example, A is complimenting B on her china: (14)

6

A:

ihr habt ja so en scho¨nes zwiebelmuster hier, you have m.p.7 so a nice onion pattern here, you have such a nice onion pattern here,

B:

joa: ye:s ye:s

It is interesting that in her response, speaker B recycled the positive adjective used by speaker A, although speaker B did not perform a second assessment of the evening but instead assessed the compliment itself. 7 m.p. = modal particle.

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This response is very different from the ones observed for American English, yet there are no indications in the transcript or in the video that would indicate that this response is considered unusual by the coparticipant. The sequence of compliment/ compliment-response comes to an end and the speakers move on.8 German speakers also accept compliments by giving a second assessment of the object/quality that is as strongly positive as the first assessment that the compliment giver used. This is quite different from the type of assessments Pomerantz (1978) described for American English since Americans usually downgrade their second assessments. When Germans use a same strength second assessment it is followed by a response pursuit marker (Jefferson, 1980). Occasionally, the response pursuit marker is uttered by itself. Data segment 17 shows a same strength adjective with a response pursuit marker: A is the guest and in his first turn, he is gazing at B, the person who barbecued the meat.9 (16) A: u¨brigens (.) das fleisch exzel [lent by the way (.) the meat excel [lent by the way (.) the meat excel [lent [ B: [super ne? [super right? [super right? A: exzellent excellent excellent B: joa. yeah. yeah. 8 This type of second assessment was also found as a second pair part to assessments that were not compliments, i.e. when speakers were evaluating an object or a person other than the coparticipant (Auer and Uhmann, 1982: 5, and discussion thereof on pages 10–11, translation mine):

(15)

X:

dhh Dorizithin dhh dorizithin ((name of medication))

C:

ja di hab ich auch genommen also ich fand die sogar gut; yes them i have also taken well i found them even good;

X:

ja sin se auch

dhh dorizithin ((name of medication))

yes i took them too, i found them even to be good;

=>

yes are they also yes they are 9

A and B know each other well enough for A to know that B never goes shopping. This background information and A’s eyegaze towards B are strong indications that A is complimenting the cook and is not simply assessing the quality of the meat. An anonymous reviewer rightly pointed out that presenting only very short data segments can have shortcomings: The reader does not see the preceding talk and thus does not have all the necessary information for interpreting the sequence. S/he correctly points out that if the preceding talk was about which butcher to visit and that B favored a particular butcher, then A’s comment could be seen as a confirmation of the choice of butcher. However, the immediately preceding talk was not about shopping; instead, B was announcing what kinds of meat he had available and was offering pieces to his guests. In the interest of brevity, these preceding turns were not included.

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A introduces his compliment with a displacement marker (Schegloff, 1973, 1984, 1987); after a micropause, the compliment itself is uttered. When the meaning of A’s turn is projectible, B produces the second pair part to the compliment in overlap with A’s turn. B utters an adjective equally strong as the one A used, followed by ne? (right?). Note again the difference between data segment 13 and 16. While data segment 16 shows a typical sequence of assessments (Auer and Uhmann, 1982; Pomerantz, 1984) in that speaker A gives a first assessment and speaker B gives a second assessment of the same object, data segment 13 shows speaker A giving a (first) assessment and speaker B giving another first assessment that is tied to speaker A’s. In other words, in data segment 16, speaker B gives an assessment of the compliment assertion and in data segment 13, speaker B gives an assessment of the compliment. Very striking in data sample 16 is the response pursuit ne? (right?). By uttering this, B is pursuing a response that basically has already been given (namely in A’s compliment). Auer and Uhmann (1982: 11) also observed this response in assessment that are not compliments. In a footnote, they point out that it can also be found in compliment responses. While the ne? (right?) is uttered with question intonation, this type of compliment response is quite different from questioning the compliment assertion. Questioning a compliment assertion is similar to saying ‘‘Is that so?’’, whereas a response pursuit with ne? is like saying ‘‘Isn’t that so?’’. Similar to the RPQs discussed earlier, response pursuit with the tag ne? displays the epistemic stance of the speaker. In this instance, the speaker uttering the ne is clearly pursuing an agreement. Yet, both questioning the assertion and response pursuit with ne? can initiate a full second round of compliment giving (as can be seen in data segment 16): In the second round, A gives a compliment and B accepts it, this time with a confirmation joa (yeah). Response pursuit, specifically an agreement pursuit as a second pair part to a compliment, is by no means an idiosyncratic or dialectal feature of this particular speaker. Other speakers in my corpus who are from other geographical regions in Germany display the same behavior. It is noteworthy because speakers actually seem to be engaging in ‘‘fishing for compliments’’, and are thus engaging in self-praise. Yet self-praise is said to be one of the conflicting constraints speakers are under when responding to compliments. The behavior will become more intriguing, since we shall see later that Germans also regularly display avoidance of self-praise, just as American English speakers do. The following data segment shows a speaker rejecting a compliment. However, flat out rejecting a compliment is rare in the corpus. In data segment 17, A is comparing her children. Her coparticipant (B) is one of her sons, as is Robert (mentioned in line 1). A has recently lost her husband and in the talk preceding this section, A commented on a letter that she received from B in which he apparently included several caring and uplifting passages:

(17)

A:

robert hat es .hhh ((sniff))eh- ich hm w- wie sagt man das Robert has it .hhh ((sniff))uh- i hm h- how say one that robert is .hhh ((sniff)) uh- i hm h- how do you say the beste g’mu¨t und du hoast es beste feingefu¨hl

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best temper and you have the best perception/sensitivity most even-tempered and you are the most sensitive B:

ach nee: komm, oh no: come, oh no:: come on,

More frequent are the ‘‘inbetween’’ categories identical to those Pomerantz identified for American English. That is, we find compliment responses that exhibit some agreement and some disagreement features. Just like Americans, Germans react with a question in neutral stance to a compliment assertion (which usually results in a confirmation uttered by the compliment giver): (18)

A:

m::m lecker, m::m tasty, m::m tasty,

B:

ja:a? ((high pitch)) ye:es? ((high pitch)) yeah? ((high pitch))

A:

uh uhm uh uhm uh uhm

In segment 18 we see the same behavior of the compliment receiver as we saw in the American data (segment 5). Speaker B is questioning the compliment, which results in B providing confirmation of the compliment. As stated earlier, this behavior is different from using an RPQ as a response to a compliment. With an RPQ, the speaker is implying a negative assertion, thus displaying disagreement. This is not the case in data segment 18; speaker B is not providing an epistemic stance. One other compliment response is a scaled-down version of a previous assessment (here, many nice places gets downgraded to nice places): (19)

A:

ahh da sin so viele scho¨ne ecken bei euch. ahh there are so many nice corners at yours. ahh there are so many nice places where you live.

B:

jo jo sin scho¨ne ecken yea yea are nice corners yea yea nice places

In their compliment responses, Germans are sometimes seen to qualify the assessment of the compliment. In the following data sample, A is complimenting B, a resident dentist, on his skills:

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(20) A: du bis en juter zahnarz you are a good dentist you are a good dentist

B:

[det hat immer spass gemacht [this has always fun been [it was always fun when [

561

sich oneself

[ja ja ( )((non-committal)) [yes yes ( ) ((non-committal)) [yeah yeah ( ) ((non-committal))

A: von dir behandeln by you treat you treated me

zu lassen to let

B: ja:: is aber noch en weiter weg ye::s is but still a long way ye::s but there’s still a long way to go Germans also deflect the credit away from themselves either to an object or, as in data sample 21, to a third party: (21)

A:

lecker ((talking about barbecued meat)) yummy yummy

B:

das fleisch hat sie gekauft ich the meat has she bought i she bought the meat i only barbecued it

hab’s nur gegrillt have it only barbecued

Here, sie (she) refers to B’s wife, thus B appears to be deflecting the compliment to her. Alternatively, the compliment may be returned to the first speaker: (22)

10

A:

schmeckt tastes tastes (1.5)10

lecker ((talking about cake)) yummi yummy

B:

der is aus dem kochbuch was du mir mal zu weihnachtn it is out of the cookbook what you me once for christmas it is from the cookbook that you once gave me

B:

geschenkt has given have for christmas

B has her mouth full and is chewing the cake.

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Germans also provide a non-evaluative comment on, or history of, the object/ feature/talent they have been complimented on. Very often, such an account is given after the compliment recipient has first confirmed the compliment assertion. This can be seen in the following example: (23)

A:

das klingt gut du. is ja dann lecker that sounds good you. is m.p. then yummi hey that sounds good. is really tasty

B:

ja:a. und dann a¨hm hab ich so:: .hh a¨hm diesmal mal so ye:es.and then uhm have I like:: .hh uhm this time m.p. like ye:ah. and then uhm I like .hh uhm this time I mixed like mirakel wip und majonese gemischt,. . . miracle whip and mayonnaise mix,. . . miracle whip and mayonnaise, . . .

In this particular example, B explains to A how he made the salad dressing of his own creation which he has been complimented on. Note that this account is presented after he first confirmed the compliment with ja:a (ye:ah). Germans also reinterpret compliments as requests and thus proffer an offer as a next preferred action: (24)

A:

lecker yummy yummy

B:

da is noch mehr=du kanns gerne noch en stu¨ck essen there is still more=you can feel-free another piece eat there is more=you are welcome to have another piece

Occasionally, a compliment gets ignored entirely as in data-sample 25. Without any verbal or nonverbal reaction, speaker B simply turned her back on A and began to set the table: (25)

A:

sieht aber lecker aus looks m.p. yummi looks real yummy (30.0 +)

5. Comparison of American and German compliment responses Table 3 summarizes the similarities and differences between the compliment response types in American English and German.

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A. Golato / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 547–571 Table 3 Comparison of American and German response types American response types

German response types

I. Acceptances: Appreciation token A compliments B B accepts compliment

I. Acceptances:

----------------------

Agreements/second assessment A compliments B B agrees with compliment assertion

----------------------

----------------------

--------------Agreements/assessment of compl. A compliments B B positively assesses compliment

----------------------

Agreements/confirmation A compliments B B confirms compliment assertion

Assessment + agreement + pursuit A compliments B B uses same strength adj. + tag A compliments again B accepts compliment

II. Rejections: Disagreements A compliments B B disagrees with compl. Assertion

II. Rejections: Disagreements A compliments B B disagrees with compl. assertion

III. Solution types for 2 conflicting constraints Questions – neutral stance A compliments B B questions compliment assertion A confirms question/compliment

III. Solution types for 2 conflicting constraints Questions – neutral stance A compliments B B questions compliment assertion A confirms question/compliment

Evaluation shift (downgrade) A compliments B B scales down compliment assertion

Evaluation shift (downgrade) A compliments B B scales down compliment assertion

Evaluation shift (qualification) A compliments B B qualifies compliment assertion

Evaluation shift (qualification) A compliments B B qualifies compliment assertion

Referent shift (away from self) A compliments B B compliments other-than-self

Referent shift (away from self) A compliments B B compliments other-than-self

Referent shift (compl. return)

Referent shift (compl. return) (continued on next page)

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Table 3 (continued) American response types A compliments B B compliments A

German response types A compliments B B compliments A

Comment history A compliments B B comments on item/gives history

Comment history A compliments B B comments on item/gives history

Reinterpretation A compliments B B reinterprets compliment

Reinterpretation A compliments B B reinterprets compliment

Ignoring A compliments B B ignores compliment

Ignoring A compliments B B ignores compliment

As can be gathered from Table 3, in terms of rejections and in terms of the various solution types for the two conflicting constraints (i.e., (a) agree with previous assessment, and (b) avoid self-praise), Germans display exactly the same response types as Americans. However, let me reiterate that in my German corpus I had fewer rejections and disagreements than compliment agreements and acceptances (32 of the 50 compliment sequences were accepted), whereas Pomerantz found the opposite to be the case for American English. In terms of compliment acceptances and agreements with compliments, we see that Germans seem to display a greater variety of acceptance/agreement responses than Americans. Judging from my data, Germans do not use appreciation tokens to acknowledge compliments, but instead sometimes give an assessment of a compliment, something that has not been reported for Americans. Just as Americans agree with compliments by giving a second assessment, so do Germans, but they do so differently. While Americans express agreement with a same strength adjective, Germans agree with an assessment by uttering a confirmation marker, something that Americans do not do. Moreover, Germans regularly accept compliments by soliciting a second round of compliments, which is accomplished by uttering a samestrength assessment combined with a response pursuit marker. As mentioned above, this response pursuit seems to be in violation of a self-praise avoidance constraint. As stated above, most native speakers of German visiting the US claim to downplay or to reject compliments (given to them by Americans) – a statement that is in stark contrast to the data discussed in this paper. How is it that Germans believe that they react in this particular way? Are there any factors that might explain why Germans may have a greater variety of agreement turns than Americans? Are there any factors (societal or other) that could explain why the data exhibited more examples of compliment agreements than disagreements? I speculate that the difference may lie in context and in conversational style. Kotthoff (1989: 451–452) reports on a small-scale study which some of her students undertook to see if the complimenting behavior of Americans and Germans indeed differs. Native speakers of German and American English were presented with various

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situations in which a compliment might be appropriate to give and were asked how they would respond/react. Bearing in mind the caveats about discourse completion tasks and interviews, this small-scale study at least tentatively suggests that Germans were predominantly concerned with the truthfulness of a compliment, i.e. they would only pay a compliment if they indeed admired or liked the item in question. According to Kotthoff, for Americans, however, social factors were more important than the truthfulness of their compliments; in order not to hurt the coparticipant’s feelings, they would for example pay a compliment on a new sweater even if they did not like it. In other words, contrary to what she claims Americans do, Kotthoff suggests that Germans do not engage in complimenting behavior in order to do face work. Studies of speech events other than compliments, i.e. debates, criticism in institutional settings, presentations etc., also indicate that in comparison with Americans, Germans seem to be more oriented towards the truthfulness and content of the language than to its social function (Byrnes, 1986; Kotthoff, 1989). As Byrnes put it: ‘‘. . .in German style there is greater emphasis on the information-conveying function of language as compared with its social bonding function. Such an orientation is concerned more with facts and truth-values, and in their service seeks, or at least should not shy away from, overt disagreement and confrontation. In fact, disagreement and confrontation are valued, and have become ritualized, in that they are deemed to further the process of establishing truth. Perhaps in its own way, it becomes a form of social bonding for those who customarily engage in it’’ (Byrnes, 1986: 200–201).

This interactional behavior has also been called ‘‘frankness to a fault’’ (Lord, 1996: 50). If one is to adopt this characterization, one has to conclude that Germans would only give compliments if they really believed in their truthfulness (otherwise they would begin their Volkssport (‘popular sport’) of criticizing). In addition, one would have to conclude that if the person who was complimented also believed in the truthfulness of the compliment and believed its assertion, he or she would accept it. However, given the fact that the data in the present study are limited to conversations among close friends in ordinary conversation (mainly dinner-table conversations and telephone calls), these are only tentative speculations which are perhaps a bit premature. Given that most German visitors to the US, as well as the subjects in Kotthoff’s (1989) study, note that they are surprised and puzzled (a) by the number of compliments Americans readily pay and (b) by the fact that even strangers in supermarkets and other places may approach you and compliment you, one wonders if Germans pay compliments in those circumstances as well, and if compliment responses differ in these situations. For instance, do they possibly pattern after the American responses? Such questions are areas for future research, which would also have to address similarities and differences in the overall design of the compliment turn in the two languages – for example, when and where in a conversation compliments are placed, what kinds of things interactants compliment each other on, etc.

6. Implications for intercultural communication Based upon the observed differences in compliment responses in conversations between intimates in the US and in Germany that were displayed in Table 3, one

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could ask whether these differences may cause communication difficulties in crosscultural encounters. To date, compliments and compliment responses have been compared for different languages, but only a very few studies have analyzed crosscultural interactions (Billmyer, 1990; Yla¨nne-McEwen, 1993; Yuan, 1996; Saito and Beecken, 1997; Fong, 1998). None of these studies used either discourse or conversation analytic methodology. Thus, it has not been shown how any possible miscommunication or any pragmatic transfer manifests itself in the interaction. One data sample in my corpus may be a first indication. In the following data segment, an American (D) is talking to three Germans of somewhat varying proficiency levels of English. I should mention, though, that all three are very good speakers of the language since they all have at least a Master’s degree in English-German translation and interpretation, but only A has lived extensively in the US. David, Annette, Markus and Christiane are having breakfast together. Christiane, an avid tea-drinker, has prepared her favorite lemon tea. (David and Annette’s tea always turns out bitter as they state in their conversation – not displayed.) Of particular interest are lines 2 and 3, marked with an arrow:

(25)

[Fru¨hstu¨ck in Texas Tape 1, B063] 1

D:

that’s the best tea (.) i’ve- i think i’ve ever had= D gazes at C with puzzled look

=>2

C:

=>3

= >great, right?< (.)

4

D:

uh- that lemonny kinda yeah. it’s quite nice

5

C:

((smile voice)) (yeah we like it too)

6

(0.2)

7

A:

what was the- exact name of it it’s just called (.)orange tea?

8

C:

lemon tea it’s zitronentee

In line 1, David – the American – is paying Christiane a compliment: she makes great tea – something David had earlier claimed not to be able to do (not displayed in the transcript). In line 2, Christiane is responding to the compliment, and in so

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doing seems to be transferring a response strategy directly from German, namely a same strength second assessment followed by a response pursuit marker. Recall that this is a compliment response atypical of American conversations. There are several indications in this transcript that this compliment response is very unusual for David. After Christiane has agreed with the compliment and while she is uttering the response pursuit, David is turning his gaze towards her and has a rather quizzical expression on his faceperhaps not surprising since, when Americans give second assessments, they usually downgrade. After a compliment has been given and accepted, in both German and American interactions, the conversation usually goes on without a hitch. Not in this case, however. After Christiane’s response pursuit marker, there is a very brief pause and then David continues with a speech perturbation/hesitation marker followed by a cut-off. He then continues with an explanation of what he likes, followed by the confirmation yeah. This may be an indication that he treated Christiane’s response pursuit as a question for clarification (i.e. as ‘‘you think this is great?’’), or as a confirmation check of a referent. He then goes on to produce what an American might have expected as Christiane’s response, namely a second assessment which is downgraded. Since nothing inherently ‘‘humorous’’ was uttered by either party present and since there is nothing else visible on the tape which could be amusing, one might interpret Christiane’s laugh voice in line 5 as an indication that she, too, noticed that something went awry in the conversation. She also is deviating from the German pattern by giving a second assessment, whereas most Germans in a second round of compliments simply respond with a confirmation ja (yes). There is then a short pause in which neither D nor C speak, after which A continues the conversation. While obviously there was no real ‘‘miscommunication’’ or ‘‘communication breakdown’’ (i.e. silence) apparent in this excerpt, it still did not go over as smoothly as it could have, despite the fact that Christiane speaks English well. Other researchers found similar pragmatic interference in entirely different types of interactions: for example, Taleghani-Nikazm (1999) found that Iranian native speakers who have lived in Germany for many years and who function fully in society (i.e. they are married to Germans, have children, hold a job, or are students at a German university) still display pragmatic interference from Farsi/Persian when talking in German. For example, the way they behave when answering the telephone or when making offers or accepting offers patterns very closely after acceptable and appropriate Farsi moves, but not German ones, which regularly impedes their interactions with Germans and sometimes even leads to communication breakdowns.

7. Implications for second language acquisition and teaching On the other hand, other data in my collection for this research project show clearly that it IS possible to learn/acquire the pragmatic rules that apply in a foreign culture; in other words, there are learners who figure out the preference organization and sequential structure of social actions in the target language. How is it that some do while others do not? The research to date suggests that when learners transfer pragmatic resources from one language to the next, communication can be impeded or even break down, but rarely do second language speakers get overtly corrected. So, how

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are these phenomena acquired? How are they acquired in immersion situations and in the classroom? Are there particular stages learners go through? All of these are areas of further inquiry but for in order for this type of research to be fruitful, there needs to be cooperation between conversation analysts and researchers in second language acquisition research. Many researchers focusing on cross-cultural communication and second language teaching have pointed out the need for including the social rules of language use in the foreign/second language classroom (Thomas, 1983; Wildner-Bassett, 1984; Byrnes, 1986; Yang, 1987; Kasper and Dahl, 1991; Saito and Beecken, 1997; Wong, 2000). It has also been pointed out that textbooks generally contain too little information about language use (Han, 1992) and/or that the dialogues which are included in textbooks to serve as a model of language use are often misleading and do not follow the patters of naturally occurring talk (Scotton and Bernstein, 1988; Wong, 2000). To date, there are only a few studies that show how language use can be taught in the classroom, for example, Billmyer (1990) and Holmes and Brown (1987) show how compliments can be taught and Taleghani-Nikazm (2000) provides a teaching unit on telephone openings in German. While these studies represent a much needed step towards including the analysis of naturalistic conversation in second language classrooms, they do not (yet) assess the outcome of such instruction. In other words, while some studies (TaleghaniNikazm, 2000) show that students seem to notice and correctly apply the pragmatic rules of the second language, the studies do not evaluate the long-term learning effects of this instruction. Again, this is an area where much more research is needed. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Irene Koshik and Maria Egbert for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks goes also to my research assistants Tobias Barske and Carsten Wilmes who helped with data collection. I would like to thank the members in the audience at the AAAL Convention, Vancouver, British Columbia, March 2000, and the SLATE speaker series, University of Illinois, April 2000 for their valuable questions and feedback. All remaining errors are mine.

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Andrea Golato is an assistant professor of German at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. in German applied linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She offers courses in German, conversation analysis, and in other areas of applied linguistics. Her research interests include culture and communication, native–nonnative speaker interaction, reported speech, and the use of gestures in conversation.